


Hop(e)s and Dreams

by GeorgieGirl8



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Brewmaster Jug, Craft Brewing, Farmer Betty, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-05 22:39:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeorgieGirl8/pseuds/GeorgieGirl8
Summary: Here it is, folks, the craft-brewing Bughead fantasy nobody needed!When Betty's Northern California family farm is threatened by drought, Betty hatches a scheme to diversify. She struggles to find a market for her new product -- that is, until she meets a temperamental brew master by the name of Jughead who's willing to take a risk to get his brewery back on track. Attraction is brewing between them, but life is complicated for these two, and lots and lots of fluffy angst ensues.Disclaimer: I am not a farmer, nor am I a brewer. I'm doing a bit of quick-and-dirty googling to produce a veneer of realism here, but let me apologise in advance for any inaccuracies!





	1. Chapter 1

It was dry.

 _It's always dry, these days,_ she thought.

Feeling the morning sun warm her bare shoulders and lifting her eyes up past the sandy, scrubby hills to the wispy clouds – a perfect Northern California day, in many ways – Betty found herself wishing fervently for rain.

She realized how strange it was to feel so much anxiety about the sunshine and blue sky, but she was a farm girl. Her family’s livelihood had depended for generations on just the right balance of moisture and heat, and for the past several years, they’d had too much of the latter and nearly none of the former.

The first year of the drought, the Coopers’ dairy farm had done alright, coasting by on a slimmer-than-usual crop of corn to feed the cows by making it up with sileage. But now – it was spring, her father hadn’t been able to plant any corn in the parched ground, the sileage was used up, and the well was running dry.

“Six hundred acres,” her father had husked out, bending down to grab a handful of the dusty soil in his fingers, letting it fly into the wind. “Just… empty. Idle. Useless.” _Was he talking about the land, or himself?_ His disappointment and fear for the future of their farm were palpable. What had started as a few weeks’ stay with her parents after completing her bachelor’s degree in journalism at UC Santa Cruz – a stop-over on her cross-country trek to seek her fortune in New York City – had turned into a semi-permanent move. They were in dire straits, and she needed to do something – anything – to help them.

What could they do? They’d be paying for feed for the herd come summer, and it was going to cost over a hundred thousand dollars to drill a new well. It was starting to look like selling up was their only viable option, as heartbreaking as that was for fourth-generation farmers. But who would buy a dairy farm in the middle of a drought?

Armed with a millennial sensibility, and more plugged in to trends in culture and business than her fairly conservative parents, Betty had been brainstorming solutions every morning as she strolled through the spots on their property she’d miss the most if they sold it: the split-rail fence down by the corner of the driveway, the stand of pines in the northwest corner of the yard, the dirt track that ran between what were, at one time, tall cornfields, their stalks towering over her and whispering their secrets to the wind. _Start a farm-to-table restaurant? Give agri-tours? No. Marijuana’s legal… but Dad would NEVER._ She frowned at the fine dusting of silt coating her jeans. _Raise goddamn camels?_

But the answer didn’t come until one late-spring twilight night, sitting on the porch swing with a bottle of craft brew from a new brewery some fifty miles down the coast, one she’d brought with her out of her apartment fridge when she moved out. It was May, and nine o’clock, but still sweltering. She pressed the cold, dewy bottle to each side of her face. On the label, printed in bold colours, was the image of a hop cone encircled by a halo. The IPA was called “Hops and Dreams”

 _Cute label,_ she thought. _Nice packaging._ _Little play on words, hopes-hops._

_Hope._

_Hops._

_Oh my God. Oh my God, that’s it._

_Hops._

“DAD!” she yelled, racing into the house, the screen door slamming shut behind her.

\---

To say her father was sceptical of her plan was a gross understatement.

“Are you familiar with the expression, ‘switching horses mid-stream,’ Betty?” He asked, his hands on his hips.

“Yes, Dad, I am, but—”

“Maybe you need me to explain what it means?”

“Actually—”

“It refers to the idea that once you’re right in the middle of something, Betty, it’s generally a bad idea to try and start something brand new.”

“I know that, Dad. I know change is hard and it’s scary. It’s risky – yes, of course it is. I get that. But we’re in kind of a tough spot, here.”

“Don’t you think I realize that?” Hal replied sharply, his face heating up, his eyes flashing. The tension of their situation was always simmering just below the surface.

This wasn’t the time for butting heads. “Of course you do, Dad. And I’m not saying I know better than you. Farming is something you’ve done your whole life.”

“I got my hands dirty so you wouldn’t have to,” he said with a quavering voice, grasping her shoulder with a calloused hand. “And now—”

“And now you’ve got 600 acres you’re not using. Right? So what do you have to lose?”

“Betty—”

“Let me try this, Dad. Please. The initial cost for the rhizomes is… okay, it’s not nothing, but the potential returns are pretty decent. Some of the research I did shows we could get as much as $25,000 an acre for the crop if we’re growing some of the more in-demand and niche varieties.”

There was a long pause as Hal bowed his head and took a deep breath, considering Betty’s proposal. When she put it that way, there wasn’t much he could offer by way of rebuttal. A chance was better than certain failure.

“Okay,” he finally said, looking his daughter square in the face. “You can try it for a summer. But if the crop fails, or you can’t find a market for it—”

“It’ll work, Dad! I’ll make it work, I promise,” Betty squealed, bobbing on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Thank you. You won’t regret this!”

“I hope not,” he sighed.

\---

The next several weeks were a whirlwind of selecting, buying, and planting rhizomes, supervising the construction of hop trellises, and driving for miles and miles to try and find a market for the product she hoped to have by the end of the summer.

Some of this was going well – smoothly, in fact; she would almost say serendipitously. On one of her long head-clearing walks in the countryside around her family’s farm – this time, along the old train tracks where, as a kid, she and her older sister had set pennies down, then dove into the ditch as a train came barrelling through, squishing the coin into an elongated medal (but there hadn’t been a train for, gosh, it must be almost twenty years now) – she’d stumbled on wild-growing hop plants beginning to twine their way up the old telegraph poles. These were probably plants growing from hops that had fallen off a train in transport a hundred or more years ago. She came striding back the following day with a transplanting trowel and a shoulderful of canvas bags.

But some of this was not going well. While the plants, hardy and needing very little water, were taking well to the arid soil, Betty was having much more trouble securing a buyer for their eventual yield.

“Sorry, dude,” was all she heard from what seemed like the same damn tattooed, bearded, white-t-shirt-wearing NorCal beer bro at every craft brewery she pitched to, which was every single one in a 100-mile radius. (Well, alright, fine, there was ONE female master brewer – and that was really cool – but she’d still turned Betty down.)

“Our profit margins are so slim, we cannot possibly take a chance on a brand-new producer. Come back and see us in your second year,” she heard in one spot; “we deal exclusively with one producer only – we’re bound by a contract,” at another; “we’re game to try a new producer,” she finally heard, “but we’ll need—” insert impossible number of pounds of hops here.

 _Fuck,_ Betty thought, sucking the last of a cold brew coffee out of the bottom of her cup as she parked in the blazing sun just after lunch one day. I guess we could always go online – sell small amounts to home brewers… that could work. We’d at least recoup our costs.

But we’ll need a website.

For that, she realized, she’d need to call Archie Andrews, a university friend and project partner from her social network marketing class – albeit a sort of untrustworthy one, for reasons that involved a hyperactive libido and a short attention span. But the guy knew computers, owed her a favour (or three), and could build a website in his sleep.

She dialed the number and he picked up instantly.

“Betty! My girl! How’s NYC?”

“Uh, well— hi, Arch – I’m not… actually… in NYC.”

“Brutal traffic on Route 66, or what?”

“No—um, I’m still in NorCal. It’s kind of a long story. But hey, listen, real quick question, can you build me a website?”

“I’m opening my laptop right now, Betts. What do you need it for?”

“I’m selling hops, actually.”

“You’re selling what?”

“Hops! You know, the plant? Like, for beer?”

“No shit! That’s so cool! God, there are so many amazing craft breweries in NorCal! Have you ever tried the beer from Sweetwater Brewing? Jesus, those guys know their stuff. Or, I mean, I guess they did— couple years ago they had this one IPA that won all the awards. Like, it was the best beer I ever drank. Last few I’ve had have not been as good, but—”

“Wait, sorry—what brewery was that?”

“Sweetwater.”

“And where is it?”

“Where are you?”

“Near Clearlake.”

“They are—” she heard typing— “twenty minutes southeast of you.”

“Thanks, Arch! Talk soon! Gotta go!” she babbled over Archie’s confused reply, thumbing the hang-up button, throwing her phone on the passenger’s seat and turning the key in the engine, peeling out of the Starbucks parking lot at high speed.

\---

The afternoon sunlight was settling into a golden haze around the sandy-red hills across a field of coarse grass and the occasional tall pine. Nestled into this idyllic scene was a low cottage-like clapboard building surrounded by Adirondack chairs, a cornhole set, and a fire pit. A low-key artisanal-looking sign, hanging from a simple wood frame by the path to the door of the tasting room read “Sweetwater Brewing, est. 2012.”

Betty stepped cautiously up the concrete stairs that led into the high-ceilinged brewing room, around the back of the building. Large stainless steel vats and drums and pipes, a range of gauges and screens, and long tables covered in various sizes of glass measuring container adorned the space.

“Hello?” she called, seeing no sign of anyone, despite the open door. The wind floated in and back out again, carrying the yeasty scent of brewing beer.

“Hello?” came a voice from the upper-level gangway.

“Hi!” she replied, pulling herself up to her full height and getting ready to be rejected, again, by yet another toque-wearing brewery hipster.

A head appeared out of what looked to be a small room on the upper floor, the expression on the face inquisitive, surprised.

A beanie. _Good Christ, here we go again._

Dark, curling hair escaping it on either side. The stormiest blue eyes she had ever seen. A narrow, almost aristocratic nose and a wide, expressive mouth.

“We—if you’re looking for the tasting room,” it said, “that’s on the other side.”

“No—I—actually, I’m looking for the brewmaster,” she explained.

“Well,” the man said, stepping fully out of the room and onto the gangway, crossing his arms. He was tall, lean, and – maybe it was just steamy in here from all the brewing, but Betty definitely felt her temperature rise a couple of degrees quite suddenly. “You’ve found him.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry -- this one's a little on the short side, and it's kind of explainy. Also it's the first time I've tried writing from his perspective. But I'm hopeful it will set us up for some more fun stuff to come!!! Thanks to all who have commented and left kudos so far -- I'm loving your support, it's so motivating! -- and I hope you'll continue to enjoy this weird little fic. xoxo

This moment has a strange quality to it, he realizes, even as it’s happening.

The second he had locked eyes with this girl – _who is she, and what is she doing here, anyway?_ \-- who _didn’t_ get lost on the way to the tasting room but wants to talk to the brewmaster – _which, oh yeah, right, is me,_ he remembers, still having sort of a hard time getting his head around that – a line from _Casablanca_ had sprung, all by itself, into his mind:

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

 _Of all the craft breweries,_ his perfectionist internal monologue had corrected, irritatingly. Then, trying to blink himself back to reality, he brought his attention back to the girl standing below.

Sorry, the _woman_.

Blonde – pretty – friendly – this much about her was obvious from the first split-second glance. But then there was also something else about her, something he couldn’t define; a depth, a complexity – an energy, maybe (‘ _energy’? Jesus, I’ve clearly been in California too long_ ) that overshadowed all the other stuff. _I bet she’s not quite what you think she is_ was his overall – tantalizingly vague – first impression.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked, starting to jog down the metal staircase leading down to the brewery floor.

“Hi,” she said, coming toward him with her hand outstretched. “I’m Betty Cooper.”

“Betty,” he repeated, taking her surprisingly firm grip. “I’m Jughead.”

“Hi,” she said, her smile unwavering, though her eyes betrayed just the slightest hint of surprise at the name.

 _No reaction. She’s selling something_.

“I just wanted to take up a little of your time, if I could, to talk about your hops situation,” she explained.

_Bingo. Oh well, what the hell._

“Sure,” he said, ultimately grateful for the distraction and the excuse to take a break. The ongoing stress of this job was taking its toll -- he realized it was late afternoon and he hadn’t eaten lunch. “What are you selling?”

“Well, full disclosure,” she began, “I’m brand new to hops, although my family has been farming since the turn of the century.”

“Why the switch, if I can ask?”

Her face shifted then, subtly, her professional veneer faltering a little. “We’re in a pretty severe drought, as I’m sure you know,” she replied. “The old crops are not working any more. At this point it’s just… diversify or die,” she stated plainly, meeting his eyes.

He understood that. Boy, did he ever. He nodded.

Then a small smile played at one corner of her mouth. “You know, you’re the first person to ask me that question,” she said.

“Huh,” he replied, clearing his throat. “So, tell me about the varieties you’re growing,” he said, and listened closely as she listed them off.

“Those are the popular ones,” she explained, “but we’ve also got a few niche varieties – Calypso, Santiam, and some wild hops that I think might possibly be Comet. As far as I know we’re the only producer to offer those in this part of NorCal.”

“Wild hops?”

“Yeah – coolest thing, actually. I found them growing by the side of the old railway tracks on our farm,” she said, clearly a little proud.

“And you’re not exactly sure what they are?” He was legitimately intrigued.

“No; I mean, Comet’s my best guess, and some online experts I’ve been in touch with seem to agree, but most likely these plants grew from hops that fell off a train a century ago. They don’t quite resemble the plants grown today.”

“Now, this piques my interest,” he said, his mouth beginning to curl into a true smile for the first time. “Betty—” he said, “can we talk in my office?”

\---

Over the course of a quick half-hour meeting, Jughead had – _was this a bad idea?_ – agreed in principle to buy a good chunk of Betty’s Santiam crop, a bit of the Cascade, and all the Comet (or whatever it was – the “mystery hop,” he was calling it).

It was quite an investment, and quite a commitment, especially considering the fact that here was a brand-new producer with zero track record, whose rhizomes had only just gone in the ground ( _a tad late in the season, at that_ ), and who – despite the family pedigree – had really no experience in farming, herself.

_Yeah, this might have been a bad idea._

Pulling shut the brewery door and turning the key before ambling down the side of the building, dodging the smattering of incoming customers on the lawn as he made for his motorbike, he allowed himself a moment – only a moment – of buyer’s remorse.

Never the type to be swayed in the slightest by sex appeal, he asked himself frankly if that was what had just happened here. Had he just been seduced into buying hops (of all things) by this woman who came out of nowhere? _No_ , he realized. And while he had found her attractive, interesting – objectively beautiful, even – he was confident that’s not what it was.

The truth was, Sweetwater Brewing was in real trouble.

And the trouble it was in was the whole reason he was here.

His throat burned again at these thoughts as he merged onto the highway, the sky melting into an electric neon dusk.

 _How_ did _I get here, again?_ he half-wondered, following the highway signs home.

One minute, it seemed, he was brewing beer for kicks in the spare room of his tiny apartment in upstate New York. The next thing he knew, a friend of a friend who was a bit of an expert in this kind of thing had taken a liking to one particularly inventive batch of his and entered it into a competition. His phone had lit up, and in a matter of days he was packing up to move west. He’d been here now about six weeks.

Having started strong, the new darling of the NorCal indie brewing scene, Sweetwater Brewing had gone steadily downhill since 2012 as their original brewmaster made a series of miscalculations that led to several years of mediocre beer. Because the process took so long, decisions made months or even years before could doom entire batches. In a last-ditch effort to save the brand, the investors had gone for a clean slate, fired the brewmaster, and poached Jughead, in spite of his inexperience, on the strength of a single bottle of homebrew ISA.

“You’ve just got the touch,” they had assured him. “We’ve never tasted anything like this. We think you’re worth the gamble.”

_Okay. No pressure, or anything._

Just out of college, he had taken the job in an almost careless sort of way, with the attitude that he was leaving nothing behind and had nothing to lose. Westward ho! and all that. But on that first day, stepping into the brewery with all its very real, very serious – and holy shit, very expensive – equipment, it had settled heavily on his mind that there was a lot at stake and he’d better damn well deliver.

He needed a win. He needed to do something big. But with so many upstart breweries, so many amazing beers popping up all over the place, what could he possibly do to set his brew apart?

Enter Betty Cooper and her mystery hops.

If he was worth the gamble, then so, perhaps, was she.

He parked his bike behind the three-story apartment building where he lived on the middle floor, playing over in his mind the scene when he’d started talking about terms and she’d realized her crop had really found a buyer. Her forehead had relaxed, her green eyes had widened, their dark lashes open like the petals of a flower, a breathless relief somewhere between a smile and stark surprise gracing her soft pink lips. He wasn’t meant to witness this, but he’d caught it in the corner of his eye as he reached for pen and paper and a calculator.

“Wow,” she’d squeaked; then, “sorry,” she’d breathed, trying and failing to pull her face completely back into businesslike order. Shaking her head and settling her shoulders, “long day,” she’d admitted, dropping the pretense, her eyes warm and vulnerable.

 _Same_ , he thought now, stepping wearily over the tortoiseshell cat splayed in the rosy sunbeam on the hardwood floor as he stumbled to his couch, where he dropped onto his back with a groan and closed his eyes. _Same._

He felt four little feet hop onto his shins and stretched out a hand to rub the furry head. “Hello there, Kafka,” he murmured. Pointy teeth gently closed around his thumb. “Nice to see you, too, girl.”

For the first time in months, he had something like positive anticipation (rather than dread) in his chest at the thought that he’d need to call Betty tomorrow to firm up some details of their deal. For the briefest moment, his tired brain worried that tomorrow would be too soon to call, but then he remembered this was just a business call -- he wasn’t asking her out or anything.

Suddenly, unaccountably, _Casablanca_ was in his head again:

“This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, things heat up a little in this one :) Hope you enjoy!  
> Thanks for reading!  
> <3

“MOVE YOUR SMUG BABY BOOMER ASS, ALREADY!”

Betty was yelling at a Chrysler Sebring convertible, driven by a bald man in giant sunglasses, which was maneuvering into her lane at a painful crawl. Her windows were closed, the air conditioning straining against the onslaught of another high-90s afternoon.

“I’m just sensing a little… tension,” said Kevin, choosing his words with care and trying to look casual about grasping the handle on the ceiling of the car. He’d been Betty’s best friend since his father, now the Sherriff, had moved their family to this small town in the seventh grade.

“I told you, Kevin,” she snapped, “I’m fine. Just fine. Life is going—” she swerved suddenly, leaning on the horn, “fine.”

“Yes—yes, you did mention that,” Kevin muttered, now wrapping his left hand around the side of his seat. “And yet…”

“Don’t I seem fine?” she asked shrilly.

“You _look_ amazing – seriously, Betty, that tan! How dare you? Farm life obviously agrees with you,” he said. “But I’m thinking more about the general, ah, vibe you’ve got going on right now.”

“‘Vibe’? What’s wrong with my ‘vibe,’ Kevin?” she glared at him.

“Eyes on the road! Eyes on the road, honey,” sang Kevin, attempting to cover his panic. “Let’s just… get you to the spa. You’ve been working so much, Betty. You need a break.”

The duo was headed to Zandy’s, the small town’s only spa. Well, technically, it still called itself a “beauty parlor” and mostly catered to the generation of women who made weekly visits to get their hair “set,” but it had recently started to offer a slate of services aimed at a younger crowd: lash extensions, gel nails, and – the one Kevin was most excited to try today – organic ayurvedic facials. He was treating Betty to a pedicure to celebrate her first sale.

“So,” Kevin called over from the bed in the corner of the salon, cotton pads soaked in some kind of herbal tonic covering his eyes. “You never did tell me about this deal you made. Spill the details already!”

“Oh,” said a considerably looser Betty, for whom the warm foot bath and massage chair were starting to work their magic. “Little craft brewery, really nice guy—”

“Guy?” Kevin’s voice ticked up.

Smiling indulgently, “yes, Kevin, the brewmaster is a guy – like just about all of them," she replied. "Jeez, why don’t more women do that?”

“What _kind_ of guy?”

“Probably not your type,” Betty replied with a sly smile, picking up on the subtext.

“Oh, he’s blond?” The facialist was removing the eye pads and starting a rejuvenating oil massage.

“No,” she said, chuckling. “You know what I mean.”

“What’s the place called?” he asked, fishing his phone out of his pocket and trying to see the screen through the fingers rubbing oil into his laugh lines.

“Sweetwater.”

There was a long pause, and then a low whistle. “Well, hello brewmaster… Jughead?” he said, squinting at the words, his voice swinging from seductive to incredulous.

“I’m guessing he’s got a photo on the website,” said Betty, who’d just decided on “Lavender Lust” polish for her toes.

“Yes, he does,” Kevin confirmed. “Yes, he does.”

“Anyway, he seems nice. And he was willing to take a chance on me. God, I know I should be happy about this sale, Kevin, but what if it doesn’t work out? What the hell do I know about growing hops?”

“Farming’s in your blood, Betty – you can do this. You’re out in that field every day, you’ve done a ton of research; you’re doing everything you can,” he said reassuringly.

“I know. I’m so tired,” she sighed, leaning back against the headrest of the chair.

“If it’s meant to be, it’ll be.”

“I wish could feel that way about it,” she mumbled.

“When are you going to see him again?”

“Who?”

“Jughead.”

“Oh—” she laughed, “I’m going to call him back later about a few things. You make it sound like a date.”

“Imagine that,” was Kevin’s deadpan reply. “Silly me.”

“Fuck off,” she said, swallowing a laugh. They passed a moment in companionable silence.

“Betty?”

“Hm?”

“You’re doing amazing, sweetie.”

“Thanks, Kev.”

\---

“Jones,” the voice on the other end of the line announced, clearly finishing a mouthful of something.

“Jughead? Hi, it’s Betty Cooper returning your call,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as squeaky over the phone as it did in her head and realizing her palms were slick. She wiped the free one on her coveralls.

“Betty. Good to hear from you. Thanks for calling back.”

“Sure,” she said.

“How are things?”

“The plants are doing really well,” she enthused, stretching out a hand to touch one of the vines, which clung fast to the trellis, looking robust. “We’ve got the drip irrigation working and… yeah, I’m cautiously hopeful,” she said, a twang in her stomach at saying so out loud. _Don’t jinx it._

“Great,” his voice was soft, like he was trying not to be overheard. “And how are you? You must be working a lot.”

“I’m ok,” she responded, but then, taking the opportunity to unburden herself a little, “I’m exhausted,” she admitted. “This is way harder than college. It’s like finals all the time,” she chuckled.

There was a low laugh on the other end of the line. “I know what you mean,” he replied. “I never thought I’d yearn for the days of the 8 am lecture, but-- here we are.”

“What did you study?”

“Oh, philosophy,” he said with a sigh. “Mostly Continental.”

“Right, so that’s how you got into brewing,” she replied teasingly, smiling when she heard his answering scoff.

“Of course. Hasn’t everyone read Schelling’s famous essay on beer?”

“Is that real?”

“No,” he replied, laughing through his nose.

“I’d read it,” she protested.

“I would too, I guess.” She could hear the sardonic smile in his voice.

There was a slight pause now as that line of conversation ran its course. Clearing her throat, almost reluctantly steering the call back to business, “so,” she said, “what can I do for you?”

“Yes—” he said, picking up on her cue, “I just had a couple of questions about the timeline you’re expecting for delivery. Looking ahead at our brew schedule I need to coordinate everything.”

“OK,” said Betty, who’d been doing her best over the past few weeks to gather that information in anticipation of such a question. “I have an extremely complicated answer for you,” she offered.

“Would this discussion work better face-to-face? Or would that take up too much of your time?” he asked.

“Face-to-face would actually be best,” she said, smiling.

“Great. Do you want to come here? I could give you the tour, show you our process. You know what, come in the evening. Try some of our product. That way you’re not giving up your workday and if we’re lucky, the kitchen might even let us try the pulled pork nachos.”

“Perfect,” she replied. “I need to learn as much as I can.”

They agreed on a time for the following week and ended the call. Feeling nervous energy bubble up in her body all of a sudden, Betty put the phone in her pocket and broke into a run on her way back to the house, visions of a hot shower dancing in her head. 

\---

Having tidied up the brewery as best he could after his crew went home, Jughead sat down in his office chair to wait for Betty, reminding himself that the little bit of nerves he was feeling were just about their deal and its implications for his upcoming brews.

He considered himself an atheist, but had recently been tempted to start praying – usually as he lay awake in bed, haunted by worst-case scenarios – that things would work out alright.

 _Please, please, please,_ he bargained with what he could only think of as The Void. _Please. I’ll give up cheeseburgers._ He instantly considered taking that back, but remembered how desperate he was. _Just let these next few batches be_ amazing _._

_Is that too much to ask?_

Predictably, there was no response.

“Hello? Jughead?” her voice came echoing up from the doorway. He jumped out of his chair to greet her from the upper level, much as he’d done the first time she walked in.

He wasn’t prepared for what he saw tonight.

On her first cold-call sales visit, she’d been wearing slacks and a fashionable-yet-businesslike blouse with a fussy collar. This evening she was dressed… differently.

A soft, royal blue short-sleeved shirt with a v-neck whose modest plunge framed an enticing shadow. Short white linen shorts wrapped around toned hips, leading down to a long pair of muscular, deeply-bronzed legs. Her feet and ankles, he noticed, were many shades lighter: _work boots_ , he realized, his heart squeezing in his chest. Tonight, she was wearing delicate sandals. Her smile – _where are these horrendous clichés coming from?_ – really did pretty much light up the room.

“Hi,” the word came out in a burst, like someone had punched him in the gut.

“Hey there,” she said, a little shy, shifting under his gaze, taking him in herself.

 _This old Minor Threat t-shirt was a brilliant fucking choice_ , he raged inwardly. “Hungry?” he asked.

“Always.”

\---

They settled into a corner table in the taproom with a tasting flight each and small plates of pulled-pork nachos, smoked fish dip, thin-crust butter chicken pizza, and sourdough pretzels with beer mustard to share.

Having dispensed with the business part of the meeting right away, they’d begun to enjoy the food and drink and were relaxing into a conversation, catching each other up on the strange twists that had led them to where there were now.

“Does farming tend to make people more or less resigned to the idea of fate, in your experience?” he queried, finishing off the last sip of radler.

“How do you mean?” she asked, biting into a pretzel.

“I mean farming – more so than lots of other jobs – depends so heavily on things like weather. Happenstance. So much of it is totally out of your control.”

“You got that right,” she said, furrowing her brow and picking at the salt on another pretzel.

“So do you ever just think, ‘well, I gotta let go. Trust in the universe’?”

She blew out a long breath, then looked up at him through her lashes, considering her answer. “That’s not an easy thing to do,” she replied. “Farming is hard. And that’s probably the hardest part,” she explained. “I’m not there yet.”

He nodded, understanding completely. “Well, as a wise person once said, ‘that which does not kill us makes us stronger.’”

“Kelly Clarkson?”

“Nietzsche,” he corrected her with an amused little frown.

“Oh," she said. Tilting her head to the side and lifting her glass of Pilsner, she continued, "didn’t he also call women ‘dangerous playthings?’ No offense, but fuck that guy.”

“Fair enough,” he said, scooping up the remaining pulled pork with a chip and popping it in his mouth.

“Hey,” said Betty, “I hope you don’t think I was making fun of you the other day.” She twisted one of the small glasses, now empty, in its wooden holder. “About your degree, I mean. Philosophy is a really cool thing to major in.”

“Thanks,” he chuckled sheepishly. “I’m not sure ‘cool’ is the word I’d use, but…”

“It is, though. And it must actually translate so well into what you do now.”

“How so?” He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Maybe my impression of your job is a bit… romantic," she said, "but—” here he allowed himself a full smile, which showed his teeth and crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Brewing is such an ancient art. I like to imagine you formulating your brew in this really thoughtful way, drawing on universal wisdom as you balance all the various ingredients, having some kind of grand purpose behind all your decisions.”

His stomach was fluttering now as he thought about what to say, his brain still stuck on the words ‘I like to imagine you.’

_I’ve got a pretty active imagination, too._

“That _is_ romantic,” he declared teasingly, still smiling. “You want the reality?” he offered, standing up from the table and crooking a thumb in the direction of the brewing room.

“You bet.”

\---

In spite of the little gusts of breeze passing through the open door, the brewing room was hot and stifling – much more humid, and a few degrees warmer than the sultry outside air.

“Phew,” said Betty, raising her eyebrows at Jughead and performatively fanning her body with the hem her shirt by way of commenting on the temperature.

“Yeah,” he replied, raising a hand to his beanie and pausing, just for a moment, before pulling it off and tossing it onto the counter by one of the large industrial sinks. This was the first time she’d seen him without it, and she found herself appreciating the wild unruliness of his waves. He looked different without the hat – younger, maybe; and in contrast with the darkness of his locks, the blue of his eyes was striking, almost electric.

“So. Here’s where the magic happens,” he said with a smirk, drawing the back of his hand across his glistening brow before stretching it out, game-show-presenter style, to gesture at the array of tanks, vats, and tubes filling the space.

“It’s all… quite shiny,” was Betty’s less-than-eloquent reply. She bit her lip, inwardly cringing at her own awkwardness.

“ _So_ shiny,” he agreed with a self-deprecating smile, his expression, warm and full of humour, putting her at ease. She rubbed at the beads of sweat forming at the back of her neck and pulled the damp strands clinging to her nape back into her ponytail.

“All stainless,” he added.

“That’s awesome.” She shuffled her feet a little, feeling self-conscious. _Wow, scintillating conversation, Betty._

“So, uh, here’s the masher,” he continued, breaking eye contact and walking over to one of the shiny tanks. “And this bad boy is our biggest brew kettle," he went on, crossing the room. "This is where the wort, which is the basic liquid that we start with, gets boiled up with, well, all the good stuff you’re going to sell me,” he explained, turning back to her with a grin. She smiled, a hopeful expression dawning in her eyes.

“What’s this for?” she asked, pointing to a large, squat, cylindrical container and resting her back against the high countertop nearby.

“Oh,” he said, his face lighting up as he strolled over to it. “It’s a Lauter tun!” he cried, as though this would mean something to her. Realizing it didn’t, “it separates the wort from the mash,” he began, launching into a passionate and highly technical soliloquy on its role in the brewing process. His usually serious face got so animated when he talked about this stuff, Betty noted, he was like a little kid proudly displaying his toys.

He was close enough now that she could catch his scent – something like pine, something grassy, and the salty musk of clean sweat. She could also see a little constellation of freckles on the side of his face. He lifted a hand to point at the various gauges and mechanisms, explaining what they did in language that Betty grasped only in part, but nodded along with, too distracted by his physical presence to pay close attention, and not particularly wanting to interrupt.

Taking a series of slow, deep breaths, she realized she could feel her pulse, rapid and throbbing, in her neck, in her legs, in her fingertips.

Keen to seem attentive, she looked wherever he was pointing, but her eyes kept drifting back to his hands – strong, wide, with long, dexterous – she would even say elegant – fingers… God, those hands. Maybe it was the heat in here, or her lack of sleep, or the tasting flight – or all of it -- she wasn’t sure what was going on, but those hands were doing something to her body.

 _I bet those hands really could do things to my body_ , she thought; _I’d let them do things_. And, allowing herself just the briefest second-long mental image of his fingers sliding up the insides of her thighs, she abruptly cleared her mind, shifted her weight and nodded, praying her face hadn’t given her away.

 _Come on,_ she told herself; _keep it professional._

As he continued explaining each part of the machine – _in, good grief, really excruciating detail_ – he was shuffling closer and closer to her, until his hand was pointing at something right beside her head. Leaning away seemed overly standoffish, so she stood her ground. Then, as he rested his fingers on the side of the container, his hand just a breath away from her face, he began to turn his body toward hers, edging gradually into her space, his voice softening and lowering, their gazes locked.

 _Keep talking, keep talking,_ she urged him silently.

But, “and that’s pretty much it,” he concluded.

A heavy silence followed.

Finally, “that Pilsner’s strong, huh?” she said, desperate for something to cut the tension.

He lowered his hand and hummed softly, tilting his head as he called up the answer from memory. “Only six percent,” he replied, his gaze looping down to her lips, his eyes dark and intense. He placed a hand on the counter she was leaning on, an inch away from her hip.

“Oh.” She looked down at an imaginary spot somewhere between his shoulder and the machine to their left, knotting her fingers together. “That’s not too bad.” Her heart beat wildly and her legs felt wobbly, like she’d run 20 miles in this heat. Maybe if she kept her eyes away from his, she thought, if she didn’t look at him or acknowledge what was obviously happening here, then it wouldn’t actually _be_ happening.

But she had the strangest sensation of being pulled into something inexorable – like getting a piece of your clothing caught in a machine and not being able to yank it out. Some process had kicked into gear and was drawing her deeper and deeper into this moment, whether she wanted it to or not. She felt a little out of control, a little outside of her own body – as though she were dreaming, and conscious of dreaming, but not able to wake herself up.    

She lifted her eyes then, and met his, so hot and penetrating she struggled to hold his gaze but found it impossible to look away. His breathing was as rapid as her own. She had the uncomfortable impression he could see right through her in this moment.

“We shouldn’t do this, should we,” he said in a rough whisper – more of a statement than a question.

He brought the hand he wasn’t leaning on up to her face, barely touching her cheek with the backs of his knuckles, while she fought the impulse to say, with feigned innocence, _do what?_

“No,” was her actual reply as she braced herself against the counter behind her with both hands, her skin burning under his touch.

He turned his hand to sweep his palm across the side of her hair – its wayward strands, curling in the humidity, starting to spring free of her ponytail – before tracing his fingertips around the shell of her ear, down the side of her neck, and across her collarbone. In spite of the heat, goosebumps raced down her arm.

“So tell me to stop,” he breathed, stepping fully into her space, his feet on either side of her own, his hands on the countertop partially covering hers, his hips now pinning her against the edge of the counter, his eyes fierce, his lips parted and soft. “I’ll stop,” he promised.

Then, blood rushing in her ears, senses overwhelmed, Betty felt herself surrender.

Looking up into his face, “don’t stop,” she whispered adamantly, and in an instant his mouth came down to cover hers with sweet, moist heat. She reached for him, hooking her fingers through the loops on the waistband of his jeans and pulling him towards her as their lips opened and their tongues slipped together, frustratingly little distance left between them already. She wriggled her feet apart, opening her stance, and he stepped between her legs to push his body flush against hers, his arms coming around her, sending waves of pleasure through her until, seeking more friction, he slid his hands down her thighs and hoisted her backside up onto the counter. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he kissed and sucked his way down her neck and into the valley between her breasts, his breath hot and urgent against her skin. She rolled her hips against him, grasping his biceps – and when she felt his growing hardness nudge her center through the thin fabric of her shorts, she moaned sharply, digging her nails into his arms.

The sound, echoing around the concrete room, so loud and feral it started even Betty, seemed to break the spell.

He lifted his head, panting, his hands retreating from her sides, and backed away from the counter slowly. Still dazed, she drew her knees together and slid off the counter, smoothing her hair and trying to catch her breath.

“Well, shit,” she said.

“My thoughts exactly,” he replied, adjusting his pants, then grabbing his beanie and jamming it back down onto his head.

“That was—” she murmured, realizing as the words came out that she couldn’t complete the sentence.

“Understatement of the century,” he said hoarsely, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and turning away.

Suddenly self-conscious, Betty wasn’t sure what the hell to do now. Running out of the room in a blind panic seemed an attractive option, though.

But “do you have all the info you need for now?” she heard herself asking, her tone somehow perfectly even, like nothing had happened.

“Yeah,” was his reply.

“I’ll just grab my purse.”

“Thanks for coming in,” he said, his voice similarly professional.

For a second she wondered if the last five minutes were the result of some kind of heat-induced hallucination.

“Keep in touch.”

The cooler air hit her face as she stepped out of the building, her mind threatening to swirl out of control. “Take care,” she called calmly over her shoulder, galloping down the stairs and rushing to her car. She threw herself into the driver’s seat, her head against the headrest, her mouth set in a thin line.

 _It's fine,_ she thought. _  
_

_This is fine._

_I'm fine._


	4. Chapter 4

The story of the next few weeks of that summer is a story of two people working extremely hard – on spreadsheets, recipes, strategies, crop-tending, marketing, research—

And avoiding one another.

“I’m sorry,” Kevin had said the following day in a tone of utter disbelief, struggling not to laugh out loud, “but you’re going to have to go over it for me again. Do I have this right? You’re all over each other. It’s insanely hot. And then – without warning! – you’re getting in your car and wishing him a good day. Is that accurate?”

A muffled squawk of assent had emerged from under the throw cushion over Betty’s face, which was pressed miserably into the corner of Kevin’s sleek modern sofa.

“Fascinating,” he had breathed.

“Kevin, it’s a disaster,” Betty had moaned, pulling the cushion down and hugging it to her chest.

“The real disaster here is that we’re about to lose our brunch reservation,” he had replied, checking his watch and cuffing his sleeves.

“What am I gonna do?” was Betty’s plaintive question.

“Get over yourself, marry him, and become the better half of a craft brew power couple, Betty. Obviously,” he had said blithely. “But first, get up off my couch and come to brunch like a good girl.”

“Kevin!”

“What?”

“What if—what if he thinks I was trying to take advantage of him? What if he thinks I was… manipulating him? Using my sexuality as leverage in my business?”

“ _Is_ that what you were doing?”

“No, of course not, but—”

“Then I don’t see the problem.”

“Even if you’re right—”

“Oh, you’re very cute,” he’d smiled, shaking his head fondly. “‘If.’”

“—we can’t have a physical relationship and a business arrangement. What if the crop doesn’t work out? What if the relationship falls apart? What happens to the one if the other fails? You can’t mix this stuff. It’s too messy.”

“Okay, that might be the first rational objection you’ve raised. But I still think you’re worrying too much. Have a little fun for a change.”

“Kev, we’re not in college anymore. We’re supposed to be grownups. I mean, look at this couch! This is a grown-up couch! People – grownups – don’t just go around hooking up.”

Kevin smiled patiently, bit his lip meaningfully, and said nothing.

“And,” she had continued, drawing out the “a” for emphasis, finally rising from the sofa, “I have no time for a relationship! I’m in a constant state of crisis with this farming stuff.”

“Yes, Betts. I’m well aware. Hence our brunch date,” Kevin had declared, opening the door and trying to sweep her out with broad arm gestures. “Nurse!” he called theatrically into the hallway, “mimosas – stat!”

\---

A few miles away, meanwhile, a similar scene had been unfolding on the patio of a Starbucks as a certain beanie-wearing brewmaster sat, elbows on the table and head in hands, across from a pink-haired girl.

“Wait wait wait—” Toni had held up five gold-manicured nails, closed her eyes, and shook her head as if to clear it. “Do I understand correctly? You made out. You stopped making out – you’re not sure why – and then you’re shaking hands and all, ‘nice doing business with you.’”

“Pretty much,” he had said, exhaling painfully.

“That’s some weird shit, Jones.”

“Yeah.”

“The weirdest.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry,” she had said, flipping her hair behind her shoulder. “I don’t get you people.”

“‘You people’?”

“Straight people.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t get it either.”

“Since when do you go around making out with random girls, anyway?”

“She’s not random. And you haven’t known me that long.”

Here Toni had shot him a long doubtful look as she sipped her cold foam latte through a straw. Having worked in the taproom since the brewery’s opening, Toni had almost been a kind of mentor to him when he started, and – as fellow former latchkey kids with the same dry sense of humour – the two became instant friends.

“I’ve known you long enough, Jug. You’re practically a monk. That’s why brewing beer is the perfect job for you.” She smiled a little as she teased him. “You must have really hit it off with her.”

“I can’t explain what happened, Toni. I wasn’t planning it. It was just like… I don’t know, magnets. We were having a nice time and everything, but not like… not like we were on a date. Just enjoying the night, talking about life. And then all of a sudden it _was_ like… that. Then it wasn’t again.”

Toni had cackled softly, almost to herself.

“I feel awful about it.”

“What?” she’d exclaimed, her face falling. “Why?”

“What if she thinks I’m trying to take advantage of her? Doesn’t my position make what I did… coercive?”

“ _Is_ that what you did? Coerce her?”

“Of course not – I mean, not physically, and not consciously, not at all. But she could feel that way. I’m buying her product, Toni. I’ve got something over her.”

“Jug,” she’d said, sympathetically, covering his hand with her own, “I get it. All those ethics classes didn’t go to waste on you. And you’re a good guy. So why don’t you call her? Talk it over?”

He’d huffed and shifted in his seat, clearly reluctant to take her advice.

“Communication is good, Jug.”

 _Yeah, it’s good. But so is avoiding uncomfortable situations. And watching_ Chinatown _for the eighth time. And ordering pizza. And not using the phone._

_Jughead, you’re a fucking coward._

_I just won’t let it happen again._

_It’ll be fine._

\---

Throwing herself into work to drown out the white noise of her life was something Betty Cooper had always done, so this situation offered an odd sort of comfort for her in letting her fall back on those habits.

Early morning runs; early morning walks through the fields; fixing whatever pieces of machinery refused to work that day; helping her dad with the cows; working with Archie over the phone to design her mail-order hops website; doing the books. And all of this, generally, before lunch.

One late July afternoon, when the sun was just starting to edge away from its blazing zenith, Betty allowed herself a moment to stop and admire the height of her vines, which had now reached up beyond where she could touch their tops, curling around the ropes strung on poles to serve as a trellis. _My little babies are getting so big_ , she thought proudly, caressing one of the small, burgeoning hop cones on a Santiam plant.

It came off in her hand.

Alarmed, Betty turned it over and over, inspecting all sides of it. The stem attaching it to the plant was brown and shrivelled; the tip of the cone was a rusty colour; pulling the cone apart, she saw that the inside was shot through with holes.

Looking up the vine, fighting panic, she suddenly noticed other stems and cones in a similar condition.

_Cone blight._

Not only did this mean she had to get to work – right now – removing any plant with signs of the canker before it could infect her whole crop, it also meant she’d have to make a phone call.

But the phone call could wait. The rest of that afternoon and evening was spent frantically – carefully – checking each vine in the field, uprooting and pulling down any with signs of disease, and disposing of them in sealed bags. She hoped against hope that the blight hadn’t spread too far, that she could salvage some of the plants.

At nightfall, exhausted, discouraged, covered in sweat and caked with dirt, her arms and hands aching, Betty threw her back up against the side of her house and slid down to sit on the porch.

The blight had taken out a large swath of her Santiam vines – but it could have been worse.

To keep this little misfortune from eating too far into her profits, she realized, she’d have to forego hiring labour to help with the harvest. And the smaller yield would definitely affect Sweetwater’s order.

Tomorrow morning, first thing, she’d call.

\---

“Jones,” said the voice, sending Betty’s stomach into a wild series of flips.

“Jughead, hi – Betty Cooper here,” she croaked out.

“Hi,” was his immediate, loud reply, like he’d been startled out of a snooze and was trying to sound busy. “What’s up?”

“I have some bad news.”

“Oh?”

“Have you heard of fusarium wilt?”

“Oh no, Betty—”

“Yeah,” she sighed.

“How bad?”

“A few dozen of the Santiam. It’s definitely going to affect your order. But there’s still time for you to find another producer – I called around to see—”

“No, no—” he interrupted. “What if we.. could I just bump up the amount of Cascade? Keep the overall total the same?”

“Oh, well—” she said, surprised, “yeah, I’m sure we could do that.”

“OK, then let’s do that.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Listen, this is just easier all around. I can always use Cascade hops. They’re my bread and butter. This would save me a lot of paperwork.”

“I appreciate it, Jug, thank you.”

 _Jug?_ His already-racing heart sped up, as if that were possible.

“Hey,” he said, licking his lips, not at all sure why he was about to say what he thought he was about to say, “if it’s not too much trouble for you, can I come out and see the plants sometime?”

“Checking up on me, huh?” Betty teased, and he released the breath he suddenly realized he was holding in a quiet laugh.

“Well yeah,” he responded in kind, “microbrewer, micromanager.”

“We’d love to have you,” she said, “anytime.”

\---

So, on a dusty late-afternoon at the beginning of August, Jughead rolled up the Coopers’ driveway, equal parts eager and anxious about seeing Betty again. He didn’t have to wait long: having heard the rumble of his bike a mile away in the quiet countryside, Betty and her father had come out of the shed to meet him, both still wearing coveralls, the blonde girl wiping the grease off her hands on a rag.

“Welcome,” she said smiling, squinting as the sun’s descending rays met the green of her eyes.

“Howdy,” he replied, stepping off the bike and removing his helmet to expose a head of dark waves, shaking hands with both Coopers.

“Nice to meet you,” said Hal. “Betty’s told us all about you.”

“Gorgeous spot,” he observed, trying his best not to let Hal's words sink in.

“We’re pretty proud of it,” he replied.

“Shall we?” said Betty, turning towards the path behind the shed.

The two of them set off together for the fields.

His face had lit up at the sight of the hop vines cresting their trellises – “that’s a sight for sore eyes,” he’d said with an awed smile, appreciating the natural beauty of the plants and imagining the amazing things they would do for his brew – and he plucked a wide blade of grass absently as they walked together, holding it to his lips between his thumbs to make a reedy trumpet and blowing.

“Ha! I used to do that,” she said.

“Ever find any four-leaf clovers?” he asked, gesturing toward a patch of green by a stand of trees.

“Not one.” They both laughed.

Then, the treed area coming more clearly into view, “what’s that?” he asked, pointing at what looked like a partial structure in the branches of one of the larger trees.

“My old treehouse,” she replied, sheepishly.

“No way!”

“You wanna see it?” she asked. “No boys _used to be_ allowed, but I guess I can make an exception this once.”

\---

“Carpet?” he cried as they hoisted themselves into the tiny room.

“When my parents got new carpet for the living room, I stole a piece of the old rug,” she explained.

Remarkably, thanks to a solid roof and dry weather, it was still in pretty good condition.

“This is plush,” he said contentedly, settling cross-legged into one corner of the house, while Betty did the same in the other.

“I spent a lot of time here,” said Betty.  

“Playing house?”

“Thinking. Writing.”

He smiled.

“How about you? Did you ever have a treehouse?”

“No,” was all he said, his wistful expression filling in some of the gaps.

“So a really happy childhood, then,” she said sardonically.

“Very. Still got the scars to prove it.” Despite the ever-present ironic smile, his eyes gave him away. He wasn’t joking.

A rush of sympathy flooded her chest and she looked softly at him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s alright. I’m a big boy now,” he replied with a flat chuckle, just as a lilting voice reached them from below.

“Hello-oo? Betty?”

“Mom?” Betty wrinkled her nose in surprise.

A woman’s face, like Betty’s but older, more made-up, and a little harder – _formidable_ was the word that sprang immediately to mind – appeared at the window, a frozen smile on its lips.

“Lemonade?”

Betty shot Jughead a look that said _I’m so sorry_. He responded with a shrug and a smile that said, _don’t be_.

“Thanks, Mrs. Cooper,” he chirped, accepting the cold glass she passed into the little house.

“I thought you kids might be thirsty after your walk in the field. It’s hot out,” she explained unnecessarily.

“Great, Mom, thanks,” was Betty’s weak reply, but she also took the offered glass.

“Nice to meet you, Jug Head,” she intoned as her face receded. “Have fun.” They watched her stride back towards the house.

“My mom,” said Betty, stating the obvious. “Sorry.”

“No,” he protested, wiping his mouth after having drank almost the whole glass in one shot. “This is amazing,” he said, looking around, referring to everything from the room to the lemonade. “She forgot the cookies, though.”

They shared a laugh and a moment of quiet, sipping their drinks and listening to the birds.

“Not to pop this nice little bubble,” he said finally, “but just out of curiosity, has the date range for your delivery changed at all? In light of the… setback?”

“Maybe,” she replied, her brow furrowing. “I may be a little short-handed at harvest time.”

“Yeah?” he leaned forward, concerned.

“I’ll make it work,” she said dismissively.

“Betty—let me help you.”

“You? But you’re crazy busy too.”

“I can spare an afternoon. I’ll bring my crew.”

“Really?”

“Hey, until we get those hops, we’re spinning our tires.”

“That would be great,” she said finally, honest gratitude in her eyes. “Thank you.”

\---

“Toni, Sweet Pea, you start on that end of the row. John and Dave G, you start here. Let’s get it done!” Jughead clapped his hands as the volunteers marched off to their places in the field.

It was a Sunday in late August – harvest time – and the Sweetwater crew – sporting matching “S” t-shirts (S for Sweetwater, of course) – had turned up in numbers so impressive, Betty had had to swallow a lump in her throat to say “thanks” when they’d lined up to receive their orders.

Even hours later, she found herself overwhelmed by the kindness of these people – and especially the kindness of their boss. “I don’t know how I can repay you,” she told Jughead as they tossed another couple of bags full of the just-picked hops into the building where they’d spend the next while drying. “We’ve got more than half the hops in already.”

“Betts—” he stopped his work to look at her. “Trust me, we’re happy to do it. Toni can skip arm day at the gym, Sweet Pea gets to hang out with Casey all day, and Dave G can work on his tan.”

“Is there more than one Dave?”

“No, there’s just one Dave.”

“Right,” said Betty with a puzzled smile. “Still—you didn’t need to do this.”

“We’re part of the same community,” he reassured her. “We take care of each other. If you do well, we do well.”

“Good point.”

As the sky overhead turned from blue, to purple, and then to orange, and the huge, yellow moon made its appearance near the horizon, the crewmembers who had finished picking their rows began pulling coolers and bags out of their vehicles. A fire came to life in the Coopers’ outdoor firepit, and the smell of roasting meat filled the air.

“What’s happening?” asked Betty, poking her head out of the shed.

“Artisanal sausage, that’s what,” Jug replied, touching his belly. “And not a moment too soon.”

“You’re making dinner, too?” Now Betty’s eyes really did fill with tears.

“And we brought a keg. It’s one of my first batches,” he said, setting down the last bag. “I hope it doesn’t suck.”

“It won’t,” she said, turning away surreptitiously to wipe her eyes.

“Hey, before we eat,” he said, coming to stand at the door beside her, “I know they’re not quite ready to pick yet, but I was wondering if I could get a look at those mystery hops of yours.”

“Yes,” she said, turning to him with a smile.

\---

It was almost too dark to see by the time they got out into the field, but the stars were big and bright, and the moonlight bathed everything in just enough of a blue glow for Betty to navigate for them.

“Here it is,” she said.

Reaching up, Jughead pulled one of the cones off the vine. It was big, almost juicy. Sticky. A little powdery. _This bodes well_ , he thought _._

As Betty watched on expectantly, he tore into the rich green flesh of the cone with impatient fingers, buried his nose in it, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply.

There was a long, breathless silence.

Then, “Betty—” he said quietly, his voice full of emotion. “Betty, oh my God.”

“Jug, what is it?” she replied, her heart pumping, her stomach filled with dread.

“These hops—” he stuck his nose back in, inhaling again. “I’ve never—they’re—I’ve never smelled anything like this. It’s incredible. This is going to change everything.”

“Are you serious right now?” she cried, her hands flying to her head. “It’s good?”

“Betty. It’s—” he sniffed again, the look of disbelief on his face settling down into satisfaction, a grin breaking out across his face. “Otherworldly.”

“Holy shit,” she whispered, smiling so hard her face hurt. “I’m so relieved.”

“Relieved? You should be over the fucking moon,” he said. Then, stepping closer to her, cradling the cone in his hands almost reverently, he held it out to her in a wordless invitation to smell for herself.

Bowing her head to his outstretched hands, she breathed in.

_Fresh-cut hay. A Christmas tree. Apples. Caramel. Fresh dirt._

She looked up and met his eyes, which twinkled in the moonlight. “Magic,” he said.

“Yeah.”

The giddiness of the moment was playing itself out in this long spell of eye contact. He started to say, “I’m so excited, I could—” and stopped himself, realizing the joking comment he was about to make cut just a tad too close to the bone. “Sorry,” he muttered, looking down at the hop.

“It’s OK,” Better replied, knowing both what he was about to say and why he stopped.

“Listen,” he brought himself to say with no small effort, “about what happened. I’m sorry. I hope you didn’t feel like—”

“No, no. Not at all. I hope you didn’t get the impression that I—”

“God, no. Not at all.”

“OK.”

“OK.”

“But I think it’s best if we—”

“Totally agree.”

“Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

“Me too.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

Having cleared the air, there was a new level of comfort between them.

“Are you going to let me try some of that beer?” Betty asked, turning to walk back towards the fire.

“Hell yes,” he said, coming along beside her. “I just hope it’s good.”

“It’s really good, Jug!” came Toni’s voice from the fireside, many yards away.

_Shit, were they—_

“We weren’t listening, or anything,” she added, to a smattering of laughter from the crew around the fire.

“Great. Appreciate it. Thanks,” he replied.

“Anytime, boss!”   


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for all the kudos, and the wonderful and encouraging comments you've been leaving! It's so motivating to know you're enjoying it -- thank you thank you thank you! <3 <3 <3  
> This chapter is a little on the short side, but important, and hopefully sweet.

By the middle of September, the harvest was in, Jughead had taken delivery of the hops, and he and his crew were busy working whatever magic they did in the brewery (“it’s pretty straightforward chemistry, for the most part,” he’d said laconically in response to Betty’s curiosity about how simple ingredients could come together to produce so many different, complex versions of something. But then, with a mischievous grin, “okay,” he’d conceded, “maybe there’s a little alchemy in it, too.”)

 _Now, this is the truly hard part, she thought_ – not the blood, sweat, and tears that had filled her days during the growing season, no. That part was easy by comparison: that’s when she’d been active and involved and able to _do_ something. Sure, there had been weather, pests, fungus and lots of other factors to contend with, but while she was taking care of the plants she’d felt some measure of control over the outcome of her little experiment. Once those hops were picked, it was all in someone else’s hands.

At least they were good hands. Strong hands. Hands with long, agile fingers.

_Stop._

Capable hands. Responsible hands. Hands attached to a friend, a nice person with great ideas and an amazing gift for making great beer. 

_That's better._

Having by now spent a bit of time sampling a wide range of Jughead’s work for Sweetwater – dropping by the brewery on the occasional warm fall evening, tasting the latest brews, and visiting with Toni and the others, whom she now considered friends – Betty suspected he really was going to do great things with her product. He had big plans for the mystery hops especially but – in spite of weeks of pleading on Betty’s part – he hadn’t divulged to her exactly what he’d be doing with them.

“Please Jug, just a hint?”

“A hint? Would you even be able to guess based on a hint?”

“Well… no. But I need to know!”

“Patience, young grasshopper,” he’d teased her. “All in good time.”

\---

Yes, waiting was the hardest part, but it was made a little easier by the company of good friends, old and new.

“Toni—” Jug was pinching the bridge of his nose in mortification. Kevin and Betty covered their mouths, trying to stifle giggles. “I don’t think they need to hear all about—"

Betty and Kevin had been joined at their table at Sweetwater by Toni (on her break) and Jughead (who’d just finished work).

“Oh, but Jughead, that’s where you’re wrong,” Kevin interjected. “Please, Toni, do go on.”

“See, Jug?” Toni said with mock seriousness. “I’m just giving the people what they want.”

“Jesus Christ,” he groaned.

(Never willing to pass up an opportunity for a good team-building exercise, several weeks earlier the Sweetwater crew had wrapped Jughead’s motorcycle in industrial plastic film while he was working, much to their leader’s consternation when he came out of the brewery at the end of the day, exhausted. Toni was performing a pretty convincing re-enactment of the scolding they’d received.)

“I think he even rage-quoted Thomas Malthus. It was good times,” Toni finished, grinning and polishing off the last of her glass of session ale.

For a moment the table was quiet.

“Betty drools in her sleep,” Kevin volunteered suddenly, prompting a near spit-take on Toni’s part and a slap on the arm from a wide-eyed Betty.

“Kevin, what the hell!”

“We’re sharing!”

“Come on,” she exclaimed, blushing.

Across the table, Jughead shot her a sympathetic smile. “As long as we’re in the mood for roasting things,” he said in a transparent attempt to change the subject, “anyone for pizza?”

“I don’t do pizza,” Kevin declared.

“Aw, princess,” Toni teased, flipping her hair at him. “Too low-brow for your delicate sensibilities?”

“Well, if you must know, I’m lactose intolerant,” he replied, feigning indignance. “But yes.”

“I can have the kitchen make us flatbread,” Jughead offered, rising from his chair. “I know they’ve got some fresh figs. Honey. And there’s oil and balsamic reduction for dipping.”

Kevin looked appreciatively at Jughead, taking him all in, a hand coming up to his heart in genuine thanks. “That sounds… wonderful,” he said, seeming touched. Jughead nodded and walked away. Leaning over to whisper in Betty’s ear, “are you _sure_ he’s not my type?” he inquired. She smiled and sipped her lager. He clucked his tongue and sat back, crossing his arms. “What a waste.”

“Toni, how’s Cheryl?” Betty asked, crossing her legs under the table.

A soft smile lighting up her face, her eyelashes fluttering down, “amazing,” she said as she played with her empty glass. Then, coming back to herself, “Kevin,” she asked brightly, “have you met Joaquin? Our new sous-chef?”

“No,” Kevin said, his ears perking up.

“Come,” she said, reaching for his hand with a conspiratorial grin.

Tossing back the last of his IPA, he took her hand and turned to Betty. “I'll just check on that flatbread,” he said.

“Bon appetit,” she smiled.

\---

Finally, one October evening after her parents had gone to bed, and just as she was about to click the judgmental “yes, I’m still watching” message on a Netflix marathon viewing of _Parks and Recreation_ , her phone lit up.

“Betty.”

“Jug! Hi!”

“I think you know why I’m calling.” She could hear the smile in his voice.

“Is it ready?”

“It’s ready.”

“When can I come?”

“How about—right now?”

“I’m on my way.”

It was dark as she pulled into the deserted parking area at Sweetwater. He was waiting for her outside, his hands in his pockets, his Converse sneakers scuffing the pavement, a nervous smile somewhere between excitement and dread opening his face in an almost child-like expression of vulnerability. Betty felt it too as she stepped out of her car – a burning in her stomach, like she’d swallowed a whole cup of scalding-hot coffee at once – almost forgetting to close the door before she skipped up to where he stood.

“So.”

“So.”

They exchanged raised eyebrows and deep breaths, neither having anything more to say beyond Jughead’s invitation: “let’s do this.”

He led her around the back of the building to the brewery, where a large bottle stood in the open doorway, a bottle opener and single small glass by its side.

They looked at it, then at each other.

“It’s a saison,” he announced. Betty didn’t really know what that meant after all, but nodded eagerly. “I don’t have a name picked out yet,” he added.

This was it. There had been and would be other beers, but the contents of this one dark-glass bottle were the culmination of a very particular journey, and both were anxious to know how it would end.

Exhaling with purpose, then squaring his shoulders, seeming to have resolved to just get this part over with, whatever happened next, Jughead reached decisively for the bottle and bottle opener, popped the cap off the lid, threw the opener back down onto the threshold, and picked up the glass. He tilted it, pouring carefully to minimize the head. The glass now half-full, he gently set the bottle down, and paused, turning the glass in his hand to inspect the golden liquid. Bringing it up, he paused and met Betty’s eyes, inclining the glass in her direction with the merest nod, like he was toasting her health. She smiled, her heart beginning to pound.

He put his nose into the glass and inhaled, then took a sip.

As he swallowed, his eyes got a faraway, intense look. He blinked, and slowly, they crinkled into a self-satisfied smile. Then he pursed his lips in a vain attempt at a neutral expression and looked over at Betty.

“It’s ok, I guess,” he said.

“Just ok?” she cried, distressed. She didn’t know what to think.

“Try it,” he said, holding out the glass. She took it, smelled it, and brought it to her lips. The beer filled her mouth, and her mind was instantly somewhere else.

The taste was indescribable – and not just because Betty lacked the specialized vocabulary of beer connoisseurs. It was like nothing else she’d ever had. It was the sun on her skin; it was water from the purest, most sparkling glacial spring; it was flowers growing through snow; it was falling asleep by a fire. It was like every good first kiss she’d ever had rolled into one.

“Jug—” she breathed, looking up at him, her eyes bright and wonderstruck.

“It’ll do,” he shrugged, still trying to bite back the smile that threatened to break his face in half, and she started swatting at him, only half-playfully.

“It’s _fucking unbelievable_ , Jug— it’s so great—it’s—it’s—incredible,” she yelled as she flailed at him. He wrapped his arms around his face, protecting himself and starting to laugh. “It’s the best fucking thing you’ve ever, _ever_ done—you ass!” Relieved, exhilarated, she had begun to do something like giggle so hard that her eyes swam with tears and she couldn’t tell if she might actually be crying for joy.

He caught her arms, finally, and they looked at each other, their laughter subsiding now, catching their breath, eyes brimming with hope.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Thank _you_ ,” he replied.

“No, this is all you – you took those weird funky hops and you spun them into gold, Jug. It’s… I’m just amazed by what you made. I’m humbled.”

“Betty, _you_ did this. You found them; you put in so much work; you took huge risks. You’re a goddamn genius.”

“Stop—stop,” she said, shaking her head. “This is your victory, Jug.”

“No,” he whispered emphatically. “If anything, it’s _ours_. We did this together. Your weird magic hops, my weird alchemy. Own it, Betts. Come on.” His words were kind, but his tone was fierce. He wasn’t going to let her wiggle out of her share of this win.

She was looking down, trying to stop the big, hot tears from rolling down her cheeks. Putting a hand on the back of her head, he came closer, resting his forehead on hers. She settled her hands onto his shoulders and his fingers gently grasped her upper arms.

Swallowing thickly, she raised her head to look into his eyes. The sky was dark and full of stars. Although she knew his eyes were blue, they looked black right now, their depths infinite under this light. Time slowed down, then it stopped. Her heart stopped. All the air went away. Nobody breathed.

Then, he quirked his lips at her. “How about ‘Serendipity’?”

“Yes,” she whispered, beginning to breathe again, her lips mirroring his own soft smile. “Serendipity,” she repeated. “That’s perfect.”

Then they pulled one another into a friendly hug, patting each other on the back, shaking hands in a lighthearted impression of businesspeople, cracking jokes about quitting their day jobs.

He gave her a bottle to take home and they said goodnight, Betty sliding into the driver’s seat of her car while he locked up the brewery.

Putting the car in gear, she backed away and headed for home. The tears rolled down her face all the way there.

\---

A week later, she woke up to a text from Jughead:

_Good morning. Hey, want to go to Kentucky?_


	6. Chapter 6

“So. What are you waiting for?”

Startled, Jughead looked up from his computer at Toni, who had appeared, as suddenly and soundlessly as a ghost, in the doorway of his office. “Jesus, Toni. Don’t you knock? Waiting for what?”

“Betty. What’s taking you so long?”

Confusion creased his forehead. He started rearranging papers on his desk. “I’m not following, Toni. Did she call or something? Is she waiting downstairs?”

Creeping further into the room, spreading her hands and rolling her eyes in a gesture that said, _okay, fine, I see I’m going to have to break this down for you_ : “you bought the hops. The beer’s made. The deal’s done. Wasn’t that the problem earlier? The reason you didn’t pursue something with her?”  

“Well, yeah. But now we’re… good.” He absent-mindedly grabbed a pen. “We’re friends, we’ve got a good business partnership.” He started clicking it with a restless hand. “You know. It’s… good.” He swiveled his chair from side to side, avoiding her gaze.

“Fine. But Jug, she made a damn fortune off those hops – from us, from all her new little homebrew mail-order fanboys,” Toni noted, eyeing the still-clicking pen in Jughead’s hand and grinning. “She’s on her way to being the most sought-after hops producer in NorCal, maybe the whole west coast. The savior of Cooper’s Dairy Farm doesn’t need your small-time ass anymore.”

He flashed her a look.

“Business-wise, I mean.” A slow smile spread across her face.

_Click, click, click, click._

“Well, we haven’t signed anything yet, Toni, and this doesn’t leave the room, but Betty and I have a handshake agreement that she’ll continue selling those mystery hops exclusively to us. So the business stuff is actually ongoing.” And as he spoke, the spring mechanism inside the pen, finally unable to withstand all those clicks, had pushed the nib fully out of the barrel, allowing the ink tube and an assortment of other tiny plastic pen parts to come spilling out. Fumbling them back together with a poor attempt at nonchalance, “sorry to burst your bubble,” he mumbled.

“Is she coming to the beer competition in Kentucky?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I invited her to come with us. It’s good exposure for her. And if our saison wins, especially, she should be there.”

Toni said nothing, but smiled in an insufferably all-knowing way.

“Drop it, Toni.”

She shrugged and began to saunter her way back out of the office. At the doorway, she paused and turned toward him. “‘If it wins,’ he says,” she said with a laugh. “You’re cute, Jones.”

\---

“Do you have your eye serum?”

“Yes.”

“Daytime moisturizer?”

“Yes.”

“Call me as soon as you get there?”

“Yes, mom,” Betty rolled her eyes fondly at Kevin as he fussed over her at the entrance to the airport security line. “Stop hovering and give me a hug. I gotta go,” she said, spying Jughead, Toni, Sweet Pea, and a few other representatives of Sweetwater Brewing walking towards security, carry-on bags in tow.

“I’ll miss you. Good luck,” he said, wrapping her in one of his signature amazing hugs.

“The beers are going to do great, Kevin,” she replied.

“No, no,” he laughed, shaking his head. “I’m talking about Jughead.”

“Goodbye, Kevin,” she said loudly, feeling her cheeks flush as she pushed him away.

“Jughead!” Kevin called out to greet him, acknowledging the rest of the group with a nod. “Take care of my girl here.”

“Of course,” Jughead replied, grabbing Betty’s shoulder in a friendly way and smiling.

“Have fun,” said Kevin with a wink, backing away from the group and blowing a kiss. Betty glared after him, but returned the kiss.

“Ready?” was Jughead’s – rather redundant – question.

“As I’ll ever be,” she replied, and they began their long shuffle through the zig-zag line.

“I wish you had let us buy your ticket,” he said as they waited. “You’re the whole reason we made it into this competition.”

“That’s not true,” was Betty’s quick reply. “And anyway, I’m happy to pay my own way. I’ve never been out there before.”

“Kentucky is great,” Jughead observed.

“Can’t wait,” she said, and leaned in to add, a little smile lighting up her face, “when we get there, I have a surprise for you.”

“Oh,” he said, a mix of surprise and pleasure in his eyes, “that's intriguing.”

Just then the security guard pointed Betty in the direction of a checkpoint on one end of the room, directing Jughead and Toni to the other, and the rest of the Sweetwater crew was scattered somewhere in the middle.

Jughead and Toni were silent as they focused on the business of making it through security, grabbing bins, unbuckling belts and untying shoes, pulling laptops and devices out of bags and pockets, and stepping carefully through the little electronic gate without making it beep.

But by the time their stuff was trundling out the other side of the scanner, Toni’s expression had settled into impatience and she was shaking her head in his direction. As he jammed his shoes back on, he looked expectantly at her, knowing he was about to hear exactly what was on her mind.

“Make a damn move, Jones,” she commanded, grabbing her laptop and backpack out of a bin. “This is actually annoying to me now, okay? She likes you. You like her. Just do it already.”

Taking a breath and closing his eyes in an apparent attempt to control the volume of his reply, “Toni,” he said firmly, looking her square in the face, “I say this with love: mind your fucking business.”

She pretended to gasp, raising a hand to her neck as though she were clutching invisible pearls. Speaking softly and leaning in so they wouldn’t be overheard, she said, “Look. If _you_ don’t do something, Jughead, I swear to God, _I_ will.”

“Be my guest,” he scoffed, threading his belt back through the loops of his jeans. “I don’t think you’re Betty’s type.”

“You know I’m off the market. Who said I was planning to come on to her, anyway?” she asked coyly, bending to lace up her boots.

Jughead glared at the back of her head, turning her words over in his head.

 _Alright, then._ He thought. _Game on._

\---

The hotel where the competition was taking place was a short taxi ride from the airport. The Sweetwater crew had booked a block of rooms together on the third floor, while Betty – who had booked separately – was on the fifth. Having made plans to meet up for dinner at a nearby barbecue restaurant with great reviews (that also served a wide selection of local craft brews) once they’d settled in and gotten freshened up, everyone went their separate ways.

Jughead and the rest of the “boy” contingent, whose freshening-up ritual consisted of little more than reapplying deodorant, had headed over first, and were seated at a long, picnic-style table, poring with great seriousness over the drink menu, when Toni and Betty arrived.

The atmosphere in the place was relaxed and friendly, a little on the loud side; the lighting dim. A live bluegrass band was playing a cover of Ryan Adams' _Winding Wheel_.

And then she walked in.

_Precious little thing  
With eyes that dance around without their clothes_

She wore a simple dress, tied around the waist, green with a flower pattern. Her hair, usually gathered up in a ponytail, fell in waves around her shoulders.

Adjusting to the crowded, noisy room, she was casting her eyes around for a familiar face, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. When she finally saw him, her smile lit her up from the inside out like an incandescent bulb.  

 _So buy a pretty dress_  
_Wear it out tonight_  
 _For anyone you think could outdo me_

Watching her walk towards him, he had an overwhelming urge to swallow, only to find that his throat no longer worked. He felt suddenly like one of those statues in a Catholic church – the ones where the heart, consumed by multiple rings of unquenchable supernatural fire, surges right out of the chest.

_Or better still, be my winding wheel_

“Jones,” Toni all but shouted, and he realized he’d been staring, frozen in place.

“Glad you finally made it,” he replied in a weak attempt at teasing them, turning back to the menu, flustered and trying to cover for how thunderstruck he felt. “I’m starving.”

“Thirsty too, I’ll bet,” Toni interjected, picking up her menu with a look of pure innocence.

\---

The group had ordered multiple plates of pretty much everything on the menu, dozens of pitchers of various beers, and was asking for a third round of wet-wipes when about twenty stunning women sporting a dazzling array of tattoos, artful piercings, and bright clothing made an exuberant entrance and sat down at a table across the room.

 _A roller derby team_ , Jughead surmised, _celebrating something_. He looked over at Toni and instantly regretted it.

“Lord have mercy,” she drawled, stealing longing glances at them over her shoulder. “Time was I would have been wishing you all a good night right about now,” she laughed. “Ah, monogamy.”

“They seem like fun,” Sweet Pea chimed in, his eyes full of mischief. “Some of us who _aren’t_ attached might be interested to, you know, make their acquaintance.”

“Let’s go talk to them,” Toni proposed. Looking at Jughead, she added, “I might be grounded, but I’m happy to play wingman. What do you say, Jones?”

“No thanks,” he replied, looking down at his glass, his stomach filling with lead.

“Come on,” she cajoled, giving his shoulder a push and gauging Betty’s reaction out of the corner of her eye. The blonde was wiping her mouth with a napkin, studiously avoiding any involvement in the conversation.

He shook his head with what he hoped passed for a polite smile.

“Why not?” she pressed loudly.

“I’m gonna pass,” he said simply, but his expression when he looked at her was stony, tense. It was clear this was the end of the conversation as far as he was concerned.

Toni was quiet for a moment, sizing him up. Then, “suit yourself,” she said, getting up. “Catch you later, Friar Jug.”

The crew reacted with hilarity to the newly-coined nickname as they stood, balling up their napkins and throwing bills on the table.

Betty and Jughead sat alone.

“Why don’t you go with them?” she insisted, not making eye contact, speaking as quietly as she could in the noisy room.

“Not interested,” he replied almost irritably, rubbing the back of his neck. “Feeling a little tired. Probably make it an early night.”

She nodded. There was long silence as both looked down, idle fingers toying with the corners of paper mats and rearranging silverware.

“Jug,” she said finally, looking up at him through her lashes, “you don’t need to babysit me. Go with them if you want.”

 _Shit_. “I’m not— Betty,” he replied, struggling. _How can I put this?_ “I’m not…” he began again, feeling his pulse quicken as he talked. “Something you need to understand about me, Betty, is… I’m not… I don’t think I make a very good partner,” he finally managed to say, deciding that, of the many cards he was currently holding close to his vest, these were the ones he'd put on the table now.

Her frown was soft, concerned. “Jug—” she started to protest.

“No, I’m old enough now to know this about myself. Growing up, my parents – well, let’s just say I didn’t have anything like a healthy relationship modeled at home. I grew up terrified of being that way with someone else. And anytime I did… get together with someone,” he went on, taking a deep breath, “I sort of shut down. I closed myself off.” He looked down to where his fingers had shredded a paper napkin, an ironic smile passing briefly over his lips. “It's not a good way to be. I’m not boyfriend material,” he declared. “And I don’t hook up.”

“That’s why she—‘Friar Jug,’” said Betty in a gentle voice, catching the meaning of Toni’s earlier comment.

He laughed through his nose, a self-deprecating snort, as he finished off his beer.

“Not to explain you to yourself, Jug,” she said, a shy smile in her eyes, “but I like to think I’ve gotten to know you pretty well. You’re considerate and kind; you’re a good listener; you’re smart; you’re honest; you really care about your friends. Those are…” she paused, searching for the right expression, “transferable skills.”

He looked at her with a crooked smile, begrudging gratitude in his eyes.

“You’re not your parents, Jug. And honestly, I think you’d make a great boyfriend.” She bit her lip and blushed deeply, realizing what that sounded like.

“Thanks,” he replied as simply as his pounding heart would allow. He smiled at her. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

\---

The hotel lobby had a bar, where he’d insisted they stop for a nightcap: bourbon on the rocks.

“Are you nervous?” she asked. “About the competition?”

“I mean – yes and no. I hope we do well, obviously. But at this point, I’ve done all I can.”

She nodded, sipping.

“Hey, back at the airport, did you say something about a surprise?” he asked, the drink and their heart-to-heart putting him more at ease.

“Oh yeah!” she cried, setting down her glass. “It’s in my hotel room. Walk me up?”

\---

He hovered nervously in the doorway of her room, feeling intrusive, trying not to look at anything he shouldn’t see.

“Juggie,” she called from the bedroom, where she was bent over, pawing through a messy, overstuffed suitcase, “you can come all the way in, you know.”

Self-conscious but resolving to follow her lead, he let go of the door and walked in.

“Here it is!” she said triumphantly, holding up a bundle of folded papers.

_What could it be?_

She took a big step over to where he stood and placed the bundle into his hands, an expression of banked-down jubilation on her face. Unfolding it, he saw some official-looking emblems and seals, along with a tangle of Latin words. Not quite able to figure out what it was, but afraid to disappoint Betty with an underwhelmed reaction to something she was so excited about, he looked blankly at her, the words “what is this?” just forming on his lips.

“It’s a certificate. It’s from the botany department at the local college,” she bubbled before he could ask. “I took some of those mystery hops in so they could help me figure out what they might be. Turns out it’s a whole new variety, Jug. They registered it for me. I got to name it.”

“Holy shit,” he said, and meant it, looking back down at the papers.

“Of course, my first thought was ‘Serendipity,’ but they said it might actually cause problems if there was already a beer by that name. So I went with—”

“Kismet,” he read, having finally deciphered the form, his breath catching in his throat.

“Kismet,” she repeated, looking up at him.

“Betts—wow,” was all he could manage, the swirl of emotions in his chest robbing him of speech.

She smiled at him as he handed the certificate back to her. “I’m having them print up a better copy to frame for the brewery,” she said. “What do you think?”

He had no words. So he did the only thing he could: he brought a hand to either side of her face, bent forward, and pressed a sweet, simple kiss to her lips.

As he pulled back, her luminous green eyes, so close they looked huge, registered something other than the shock he’d expected to see, though exactly what her expression conveyed he was at a loss to say in that strange moment. He brushed his thumbs across her cheeks, then he took his hands away.

“Goodnight,” he said.

“Goodnight,” she replied, and he walked out of the room.

Alone in the elevator, which moved at a rather genteel pace, he had leisure to reflect on what had just happened.

 

_What the fuck was that?_

 

_Maybe it was okay. Maybe it doesn’t have to mean anything._

 

_Maybe it was just a friendly kiss._

_Yeah, friendly._

 

Just then he caught his own eyes in the mirrored panel on the back wall, their expression arrestingly hard and smouldering.

 

 

_Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for reading and clicking that little heart and leaving me amazing encouraging comments. I'm just loving sharing my work with you all. 
> 
> This was supposed to be the last chapter, but it got huge, so I'm splitting it up. (Sorry-not-sorry)
> 
> And! A couple of things I want to clarify:
> 
> In real life, I think people who say things like "I'm a bad partner" are often probably actually bad partners and others should probably listen to that message and take it seriously and not feel like they have to date them in order to change them. So I was sort of ambivalent about this conversation between them in the restaurant because I don't want to perpetuate that trope of women trying to save toxic men. What I hope I conveyed is that he's been too scared to repeat his parents' mistakes to really open himself up to another person, but if (let's say) he felt safe enough to do so, he's got what it takes to be a good partner. 
> 
> Also, in addition to not being a brewer or a farmer, I'm not a botanist, so what's represented here is my fanciful imagining of what happens when you discover a new variety of plant, based on zero knowledge, which I'm using strictly as a plot device. Sorry for any inaccuracies, plant people!


	7. Chapter 7

The next day, as the results of the first category were about to be announced to a buzzing ballroom full of hopeful craft brew enthusiasts – the first of the seven in which his beers had been nominated – Jughead sat nervously between Toni and Betty, his eyes flickering back and forth over the panel of judges sitting onstage, trying to discern the outcome somehow.

“And in the category of best India Session Ale—” said the master of ceremonies, flipping open the little card in his hand, “the winner is—”

Betty squeezed Jughead’s arm.

“Fiddlehead Brewing,” he declared, and the room erupted in cheers. Jughead exhaled noisily, disappointed but undaunted. He felt about ten hands reach over to pat him on the shoulders and back, reassuring him that he’d get the next one.

He looked over at Betty with an attempt at a composed smile and she gave the arm she was holding a shake as if to loosen him up. Leaning over to speak into his ear, “forget it, Jake,” she said, grinning, “it’s Chinatown.”

Jughead did an almost cartoonish double-take, unsure he’d heard correctly. Although he’d watched that film at least a dozen times, he knew he’d never mentioned it to her. _Where did that come from?_ He smiled at her, his eyebrow arching in disbelief.

After that, it was a clean sweep: the pilsner, the radler, the witbier, the IPA, the sour – he won in every category. The floor around their feet was littered with small trophies depicting hops and sheaves of barley, to the point where he was almost embarrassed by how entirely his work had dominated the competition.

Then it was Serendipity’s turn.

“The judges were particularly blown away by the winning beer in this next category,” the announcer teased, and Jughead instantly knew he’d won. “For best saison,” he said, already looking at them, but pausing for dramatic effect, “Serendipity, from Sweetwater Brewing.”

Laughing, he pulled Betty up onto her feet for a hug, and she pushed him towards the stage, clapping her hands and hollering like she had nothing to do with it.

As he handed Jughead the trophy, the announcer said, “I think I speak for everyone who’s tasted this beer when I say we’d love to hear more about what went into this one.” The crowd began applauding. “Can you say a few words?”

He panicked a little, not much for public speaking, but seized the opportunity, figuring he could at least plug Betty’s hops.

“I’d like to thank the judges, my amazing crew, and everyone in the community, for this,” he began, looking at the trophy as the applause died down. “I also need to thank Betty Cooper, my brand-new hops producer, who came to me with something so magical I couldn’t turn it down,” he said, finding her eyes, which had begun to spill over with joy, in the crowd, “and boy did that pay off,” he added, chuckling. Then, taking a breath, he explained, “I named this beer Serendipity because – well, most people think that just means luck. But – interesting fact – it doesn’t. It means an ability – the ability to find something valuable even when you’re actually looking for something else.”

A tear rolled down her cheek and into the crease of her smile.

“And that just seemed to fit,” he said. Then, raising the trophy in a wordless salute, he made his way off the stage and back to his seat.

\---

Watching him onstage, Betty catches herself admiring, for the first time in a while, how handsome he is: the lines of his nose and cheekbones, the complicated blue of his eyes and the dark of his lashes, the lights reflecting blue on his black hair, the curl that’s perpetually tumbling into his eyes.

And as she listens to him explain the meaning of serendipity, a little breathless, she’s so proud – but that feeling is not as pure, not as soaring as it should be. There’s an ache in it; something is mixed in with it, something she can’t quite name, and it sets her heart thumping into her neck in an uncomfortable way, tears rolling down her face.

Then the words come to her, sharp and clear in her mind:

_He is a beautiful man._

_He is the most beautiful person._

_And I am in love with him._

The words are just true. There’s no arguing with them. But they’ll stay curled around her heart for now like a sleeping indoor cat.

She opens her bottle of water and starts gulping like she’s trying to wash down a pill. Then he’s coming back offstage, smiling at her with a look that’s an impossible combination of wonder and sadness, and he’s grabbing blindly for her hand as he sits down, and their fingers lace together, and they don’t let go for the rest of the ceremony.

\---

The awards given and the ceremony over, the ballroom had emptied out and the hotel lobby, whose tile surfaces amplified the considerable noise, was flooded with hundreds of people in high spirits.

“Oh my God, what a night,” Toni exclaimed, laughing loudly and pumping her fists. The rest of the gang piped up with multiple versions of “where are we going to celebrate?”  

“You guys go ahead,” Jughead said, a strange stricken look on his face.

“What?” all mouths hang open.

“It’s been… an intense day,” he said, running a hand through his hair and trying to smile so they’ll leave him alone. “I’m gonna crash. Make sure to get totally fucked up for me, though,” he added, clapping a hand on Sweet Pea’s shoulder.

Having hooked her arm through Betty’s, Toni looked sympathetically at Jughead, seeming unwilling all of a sudden to continue her pressure tactics.

“Get some rest, Jug,” she said with a smile.

As the group moved away, Betty heard him call her name and turned back. He held out his arms. She stepped into them and he pulled her close. The noise in the lobby peaking now, almost deafening, he put his lips to her ear, muttering through her hair, loudly enough for her to hear: “Of all the breweries in all the towns in all of Northern California, I am so glad you walked into mine.” Smiling into his shirt, nestling into his shoulder, she tightened her arms around his chest. She felt him kiss the top of her head, then release her. He walked off towards the elevators without looking back.

\---

_I am in love with her._

_I don’t trust myself not to tell her._

_She deserves better than this._

\---

Taking refuge in the bathroom stall at the second bar the crew visits that night, Betty checks her phone. No new texts. Her heart sinks a little, but she's not surprised. Then, thumbing her e-mail app, she thinks at first, “this must be a glitch.”

But no.

There are over a thousand new e-mail messages in her inbox.

\---

She rolls over, pulling the starchy sheets around her neck as she looks at the red digits on the clock for the hundredth time.

It’s just after two a.m.

She sighs, fidgeting, kicking off the sheets, and throws her arms and legs out in a starfish pattern across the mattress, exasperated.

She closes her eyes, opens them again. She takes a breath. She swings her legs over the side of the bed.

\---

Her hand was poised an inch away from the door.

_Are you sure about this?_

_Yes. I need to say it. I need him to hear it._

_Betty. At two a.m.?_

But before the voices in her head could take these thoughts much further, her knuckles were rapping softly on the door of Jughead’s room. Inclining her ear after the second round of knocks, she heard muffled movement. The chain slid across, and the door inched open to reveal Jughead in plaid pyjama pants and a white t-shirt, squinting, trying to rub an expression into his sleepy face.

“Betty—what time is it?” he leaned against the open door, his hair standing up at all angles.

Now that she had woken him, now that he was really standing here in front of her, and now that there was nothing left to do but spill her guts, the regret was instantaneous. “Jug—oh crap. I’m so sorry. I—oh my God, this was a terrible idea. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Her stomach twisting into a thousand knots, her mouth dry, she tried to stop the flow of words, but her lips just kept moving, letting them escape. She curled her fingers into fists, cursing her impulsiveness. “Go back to bed, Jug. I’m sorry.”

“No, no – Betts: what’s going on? Tell me.”

“I can’t,” she said, dejected, waving the question away and turning back towards the staircase. “Goodnight.”

“Hey,” he said, suddenly alert, reaching into the hallway to grab her arm, holding the door open with his foot. “Did something happen to you?” he asked, dipping his head to meet her gaze.

“No, no, nothing happened, Jug.”

He exhaled, relieved.

“God, my timing sucks.”

“Betty, what—” he was shaking his head, bewildered.

“I like you,” she blurted before she could think better of it, squeezing her eyes shut. “Like, I _really_ like you. A lot. And I know it fucks everything up, and we agreed that we wouldn’t…” she pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes, then looked up at him, her expression open, vulnerable. “But I couldn’t, Jug. I couldn’t help it any longer. I needed you to know.”

“Betts—” he breathed. His hand slipped off her arm, his mouth slightly open. He was suddenly panting, like he’d just run up a staircase, his gaze turning inward.

“Please, I’m so sorry—” she pleaded, bracing herself against his reaction. “Forget I said anything. Can we just pretend this never happened?” She turned again to go back upstairs.

“Fuck that,” he said, his voice rough, stepping fully into the hallway and pulling her back to him. All at once his hands were on her shoulders, pushing her gently against the wall, covering her mouth with his own. Her hands came up to his forearms as she met the kiss, glitter exploding behind her eyelids. Somehow urgent and tender at the same time, the kiss felt like a statement – a stamp of approval on the risk she’d just taken.

“The minute I saw you,” he whispered intently, pulling back and stroking her hair away from her face with tremulous fingers, “I knew – I knew… well, I don’t know what I knew, actually,” he admitted with a soft chuckle. “I don’t believe in any of that shit, usually. But as soon as I saw you I just… I knew something important was happening.”

“Juggie,” she breathed, her fingers curling lightly into the dark waves of his hair, her heart swelling like a balloon inside her chest.

“Thank you for waking me up,” he said quietly, affection overflowing in his gaze.

It was her turn, now, to claim his lips, the long, slow kisses that followed like mouthfuls of a sweet summer peach.

“Oh Betty,” he sighed against her lips as he grazed her nose with his own, “I’m weird. I’m so fucking weird. I work all the time. And I think way too much about beer.”

She giggled between kisses. “Jug, I know,” she said reassuringly. “I like that about you.”

“And I have a cat, Betty. I think she hates me,” he said, having a harder and harder time planting kisses on her laughing mouth. “Just – you know, full disclosure,” he explained, his face breaking into a grin.

“It’s ok,” she said, and the smile drained slowly off her face. “But what does this—” she slid her arms around his shoulders, “mean for… the business stuff?”

His eyes increasingly dark and hungry as he looked at her, his hands beginning to roam possessively over her body, he brought his mouth back down on hers, which fell open to his tongue as she leaned her head back against the wall, melting into his kiss. “I don’t care,” he murmured against her lips. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

His last three words sent an electric thrill through her body.

But as he reached for her hand to pull her into his room, they both realized that, as they’d been confessing their feelings out in the hallway, the door had closed and locked behind him.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

“Well, then,” Betty said, suppressing a smile, “my place it is.”

\---

Although the rest of the night would forever remain a pleasant dream-like blur in his memory, individual sense impressions did remain.

The smooth slide of his fingertips across the skin under her shirt.

The stretch and give of her cotton pyjama shorts, bunched up in his fist.

The sound of her laughter at the look on his face when she’d produced a strip of condoms, as if by magic, from her makeup bag (“I’m fully prepared for everything, Juggie,” she’d explained, showing him the water purification tablets and boat flare that were somehow also stashed in there.)

The taste of her on his tongue, salty and sweet.

Her gasps in his ear.

The soft press of her thighs around his hips.

The tickle of her fingers under his jaw, her arm wrapped all the way around the back of his neck.

The high, breathy tone of his name on her lips as he pushed them both over the edge.

The weight of her head, lying on his chest, as he drew lazy circles on her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks! Thanks again for reading along... and for encouraging this bad habit of mine with your kudos and comments. I can't tell you what it means to me when I read your reactions <3 
> 
> I know this is a bit of a vague ending, but I guess I just sort of wanted to let these characters drift off into the sunset (or sunrise?), so to speak.
> 
> <3 <3 <3
> 
> I've got no plans at this moment for my next fic, but I hope to be back whenever inspiration strikes.


	8. The Morning After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I'm trash and I can't seem to stop writing this stuff lately. 
> 
> Here's a very fluffy little morning-after postscript. I realized there were some loose ends I could tie up for these characters, and I thought it might be cute to imagine them holing up in their hotel room, honeymoon-style.

“What are you doing?” she cooed with a lazy smile, just opening her eyes, arching her back in a languorous stretch.

“Hm?” he hummed, propped up against the headboard on a little cloud of fluffy hotel pillows. He raised his eyebrows but didn’t move his eyes off his phone, his thumbs tapping out a message.

She had no idea what time it was, but the sun was bright enough now to come bursting in around the blackout curtains.

She craned her neck to press a kiss on the side of his arm, gathering the sheets up around herself. “I hope you’re not the type to kiss and tell, Jug,” she purred, nuzzling up under his elbow to rest her head against his bare chest.

“Well…” he teased, a mischievous grin forming at the corner of his mouth.

She gave him a little shove.

“No, no. Just gotta let Toni know I’m still alive. It’s getting kind of late, and I don’t want anyone to panic if they knock on my door and I don’t answer. Not that they’re probably awake yet anyway,” he added. “There. Sent,” he said, and turned to her, lifting her face with the crook of his arm and sealing their lips together. His eyes drifted closed as memories of the previous night suddenly came flooding vividly back.

She broke the kiss but her face stayed close, and she stroked his cheek with the side of her index finger. “So what happens now?”

“We order room service,” he replied with a contented smile, and kissed her lips. “Then, maybe—” he kissed her nose— “we take a shower—” he kissed her left eye.

“You said 'we'? Singular ‘shower’?” she murmured.

“Mm-hmm,” he said, and kissed her right eye. “Then—” he kissed her mouth, his lips lingering – “well—” he suggested, going back for more – “maybe we meet back here.”

“I don’t hate this plan,” she said against his smile, sliding her hand from his navel to the shoulder opposite the one cradling her head and back down again. Then, leaning back a little, her expression changing subtly, she looked into his eyes.

“What?” he asked, his brows drawn together.

She laughed to herself and shook her head, her eyes closed and her lips pursed, having second thoughts about whatever it was she was going to say.

“Betts, what is it?” he pressed. “Let’s not do this again, huh?”

“I—sorry. Can I ask you something? I feel like this is a weird time to ask, but also I probably should have asked you a while ago,” she said.

“Anything,” he replied, laying his hand reassuringly on her arm.

She took a breath, hesitated, lifted the sheet over her mouth and sheepishly asked, “is Jughead your real name?”

Throwing his head back and knocking it on the headboard in a silent laugh, “oh my God,” he replied. “I can’t believe this didn’t come up before. No, Betty, it’s not. Wow, how did we not discuss this?”

“I don’t know,” she cried, turning pink. “I guess at a certain point – like, once we’d been hanging out for months – I was afraid to ask!”

“I don’t know whether to be flattered that you’d go to such lengths to respect my privacy or bummed that you– what, that you thought I’d be mad?”

“Well, I took it for granted when I met you, and then I got used to it. And then it seemed rude to question it. I mean, what if that really was your real name? It’s a rude question.”

“You think someone would actually name their kid Jughead. For real.”

“It seems possible!”

He shook his head. “Congratulations, Betty. You just slept with a guy whose name you don’t even know.”

“Stop it!” she laughed, sitting up to grab a pillow and swinging it at his head. He caught it and threw it over the end of the bed, gasping for breath between bouts of laughter.

“So,” he said, “do you want to know?”

“Yes. Tell me!”

Settling his face into a serious expression, “Forsythe Pendleton Jones, the third,” he intoned pompously, raising one eyebrow.

“Are you serious?” she shrieked, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Yeah I’m serious,” he replied, mock-defensively. “Okay, _now_ you’re being rude.”

At that, she sprang up on all fours and pounced, straddling his lap and trying to wrestle with the arms he threw up around his head for protection. “I’ll show you rude,” she said, pushing his hands back onto the headboard and smothering his face between her breasts.

But her tactics proved ineffective, as her victim made a pleased little noise in the back of his throat and counterattacked with his mouth, clearly pleased to find himself in this position. Betty squealed and squirmed until, suddenly, she was on her back, the realization that room service would have to wait becoming abundantly clear as his body pressed against her thigh.

\---

Many minutes later, when he had found the motivation to roll onto his side and check his phone, there was a text from Toni.

_Not in your room, huh? Early morning jog I guess… ;)_

He replied: _Yeah, yeah, you’re onto us :P_

His phone buzzed again.

Toni: _BTW I don’t think your cat hates you, Jug_.

Jughead sighed in exasperation: _OK, how much of the conversation did you hear?_

Toni: _Oh, everything. The afterparty was in Sweet Pea’s room. We might have had our ears to the door… :D_

\---

“Well, I’m glad we hammered out a plan,” said Betty, lying across the bed after eggs and toast, sipping the last of the room service coffee.

“You feel good about it?” he asked, bending over to kiss the top of her head.

The plan – sketchy, but promising – was this: Jughead would approach the owners of Sweetwater Brewing about investing in Betty’s hops business and buying the exclusive rights to the Kismet hops. This investment would help her scale up the business the way it now seemed obvious she needed to and had the added benefit of putting the two of them on a somewhat more even footing.

“Yes. But am I going to have to have board meetings and stuff now?” she wrinkled her nose. “That’s not what I went to journalism school for.”

“I’ll make them bring a keg to every meeting,” Jughead offered. “And hey, maybe you can freelance in the off-season?”

She smiled at him. “Yeah. I’ll become a beer critic. And my first article will be a brutal takedown of multiple-award-winning brewmaster Jughead Jones. Ugh, he’s _so_ overrated!”

He set down his coffee cup and playfully jumped on her back, pawing at her arms and turning her over on the bed. “I’ll show you overrated, cub reporter!”

“You will, will you?” she laughed, running her hands down his chest, a suggestive look in her eye as they traveled lower. “No—wait, I think you already have,” she teased.

“I’ll take that as a challenge,” he replied, sliding down her body, planting kisses as he went.

\---

_God, he looks amazing wet._

Having exited the shower first, he stood on the tile in all his naked, dripping glory, holding a towel up for Betty. The water clung to and exaggerated his dark lashes, setting off the blue of his eyes; drops rolled down the olive skin of his toned arms, chest, and stomach.

“Betty?” he prompted her – she just stood there, staring. “My eyes are up here,” he joked.

 She came back to the moment and flashed him a seductive smile. “I know we just—” she said, stepping into the towel. He enfolded her in it, and in his arms, and kissed her – “but I kinda—”

“You,” he said in mock disapproval, “are literally insatiable.”

She shrugged, her smile widening.

“I’m a human man, Betty! I’m not a robot!”

“That’s the problem, see—” she chuckled, kissing him again. “I’m not into robots.”

“Betty—” he began, and she swallowed the rest of his sentence, deepening their kiss.

“What’s the voice command for ‘take me back to bed and have your way with me' again?” she asked.

He shook his head. And in the corner of his eye he noticed her – apparently magic – make-up bag sitting on the bathroom counter. “Hey,” he asked, “how did you manage to get on a plane with a boat flare in there?”

“I could tell you,” she murmured, finding his lips again, “but then I’d have to kill you.”

He frowned a little as he kissed her. “You can’t,” he told her, scooping her up in his arms to carry her back to bed. “I’m a robot.”


End file.
